September 09, 2011

President Obama unveiled his $447 billion plan to put America back to work, the “American Jobs Act,” last night before a joint session of Congress. Although no legislation was introduced, Obama told Congress to pass his jobs package “right away.”

An embargoed excerpt from the speech stimulated my concern that Obama would not give voice to the racial gap in employment:

I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything. (Emphasis added)

I knew then Obama was not going to adopt the Congressional Black Caucus’ recommendation and acknowledge black Americans’ pain. In a letter to the President, CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver II wrote:

Acknowledge the depression-like unemployment crisis in the African American Community and articulate a targeted approach for job creation to ensure that communities with unique needs are assisted in a direct and comprehensive fashion.

Still, I tuned in. Obama did not predict how many jobs his plan would create. But if the past is prologue, infrastructure spending will put few African Americans back to work.

Consider also that African Americans represent roughly five percent of construction workers. So I question whether the proposed $80 billion in infrastructure spending will create jobs for “communities with unique needs.”

July 15, 2011

A new U.S. Department of Labor report, “The Black Labor Force in the Recovery,” found that about half of African Americans aged 16 and older have a job. Of those working, 17.5 percent have only a piece of a job:

In 2010, about half of blacks aged 16 and older had a job and 17.5 percent of those employed worked part-time. Blacks are the only racial or ethnic group where women represent a larger share of the employed than do men—more than half (54.3 percent) of employed blacks in 2010 were women, compared to 46.3 percent among employed whites. Employed black women still earn less than employed black men.

The Labor Department reports that nearly 20 percent of employed blacks work in the public sector, compared to 14.6 percent of whites. As federal stimulus funds run out and state and local governments lay off workers, black labor pains will increase.

So forget about that “good government job.” In comments on the House floor, New York Rep. Charles Rangel said:

And so many African-Americans, for reasons that I do not have to go into, have sought public service as a way of life because of the security that’s involved in it. And so, when we talk about cutting the budget and cutting the services that are provided, we’re talking about a larger number of minorities that would be losing their jobs as a result of budget cutting.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote, “this is not your parents’ job market”:

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow? And can he or she adapt with all the change, so my company can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets? In today’s hyperconnected world, more and more companies cannot and will not hire people who don’t fulfill those criteria.

To get over, black workers must become entrepreneurial-minded. That doesn’t mean one has to run out and start up howigotover.com. Rather, one has to think and act like an entrepreneur.

LinkedIn Co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman is the co-author of the forthcoming book, “The Start-Up of You,” which will provide “a revolutionary new blueprint for how to survive and thrive in this new career landscape”:

Today, the career escalator is jammed at every level. Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Wages are virtually stagnant. Global competition for jobs is fierce. Technology is replacing both white and blue collar workers, and at an increasing clip. The employer-employee pact is over; job security doesn’t exist.

[…]

Start-ups and entrepreneurs are nimble. They are innovative. They invest in themselves. They are self-reliant, yet build strong networks to amplify their strengths. They assess the needs of their target customers. They leverage their competitive advantages in the marketplace.

July 11, 2011

The dismal June unemployment report is a reminder that when white America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia. Truth be told, race is the subtext to the jobless recovery.

The Associated Press reports that black economic gains have been wiped out by the recession:

Millions of Americans endured similar financial calamities in the recession. But for Goldring and many others in the black community, where unemployment is still rising, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. Some even see a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.

[…]

Since the end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

But the disappearing black middle class is not on policymakers’ agenda. Instead, the White House is convening a Hispanic Policy Conference:

On Monday July 11th and Tuesday July 12th, the White House will host a Hispanic Policy Conference, bringing community leaders from across the country together with a broad range of White House and Cabinet officials for an in-depth series of interactive workshops and substantive conversations on the Administration’s efforts as they relate to the Hispanic community.

Participants, including community leaders and local elected officials, will have the opportunity to interact with federal policy makers on the issues that matter most to Hispanics and all Americans, including creating jobs and strengthening the economy, expanding access to affordable and quality health care, reforming our nation’s education system, protecting civil rights, and fixing the broken immigration system so that it meets our nation’s 21st century economic and security needs.

So, some black folks are bashing Princeton Professor Cornel West for his sharply phrased critiques of President Barack Obama’s failure to specifically address crisis-proportion problems in a long-suffering segment of American society: the black community.

Black supporters of the first African-American president echo the rationale advanced by Obama himself that he is the president of all Americans so addressing issues specific to African-American would be inappropriate.

The Hispanic Policy Conference is merely the latest outreach event to address issues important to a specific group.

The goal of the Initiative is “to highlight both the tremendous unmet needs in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as well as the dynamic community assets that can be leveraged to meet many of those needs.”

Will the White House’s cold shoulder to the unmet needs of African Americans erode black support for President Obama?

July 07, 2011

The Congressional Black Caucus is holding a national black leadership summit “to discuss the effects of the country’s recession on the African American community and the best methods to address the jobs crisis.”

The roundtable discussion will be led by CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver III. The speakers will include Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.

To address the unemployment crisis and the need for job creation solutions in undeserved communities, the Congressional Black Caucus called upon private and public sector partners to immediately remedy the crisis by going into communities with legitimate, immediate employment opportunities for the underserved. Additionally, the Caucus is reaching out to communities to receive their proposed solutions, advice, and ideas on how best to immediately address the crisis.

July 06, 2011

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the June jobs report on Friday. Andy Kroll of Mother Jones magazine wrote about the story behind the jobless crisis in African American communities:

D.C.’s divide is America’s writ large. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for black workers at 16.2% is almost double the 9.1% rate for the rest of the population. And it’s twice the 8% white jobless rate.

The size of those numbers can, in part, be chalked up to the current jobs crisis in which black workers are being decimated. According to Duke University public policy expert William Darity, that means blacks are “the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there’s a downturn, they’re the first to be released.”

That may account for the soaring numbers of unemployed African Americans, but not the yawning chasm between the black and white employment rates, which is no artifact of the present moment. It’s a problem that spans generations, goes remarkably unnoticed, and condemns millions of black Americans to a life of scraping by. That unerring, unchanging gap between white and black employment figures goes back at least 60 years. It should be a scandal, but whether on Capitol Hill or in the media it gets remarkably little attention. Ever.

In March, 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up slightly from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-1.)

In a statement on the employment situation, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee said:

The overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years, but there will surely be bumps in the road ahead.

For African American workers, it is indeed a bumpy ride. While the calendar says it's April 1, the employment situation seems like Groundhog Day.